The present invention relates generally to information technology (IT) systems and, more particularly, to network traffic based power consumption estimation of IT systems.
IT professionals are continually faced with mounting challenges due to, for example, rising energy costs, data center complexity and mounting demands from business units, each of which can curtail an organization's ability to grow. In addition, the recent “green technology” movement (which encompasses a continuously evolving group of methods and materials, from techniques for generating energy to non-toxic cleaning products) has led to efforts in promoting “green computing” given that IT environments are becoming more and more power and cost intense in their operation. In particular, developments in green computing technologies have been driven by high-density computing, increasing server counts, and the enlargement of cooling and uninterruptible power supply capacities.
One major problem in optimizing power consumption is that in a conventional IT environment, the power consumption distribution among different IT components is unknown. As a result, monthly or yearly billed electrical costs can not be linked with particular deployment decisions or operating practices. Typically, responsible managers can only track and control power consumption based on the basic knowledge of which components go into facilities, cooling, IT, etc. In the case of IT in particular, it is often the case that little is known as to what IT components are using which amounts of power.